To soften a portrait and get rid of lines and blemishes
By John Sweeney - 16th of January 2007
To soften a portrait and get rid of lines and blemishes on a face:
- Open a suitable picture in Photoshop.
- Using the layers channel make a copy of the picture.
- Click on the Background or lower element in the layers pallet just to highlight it.
- Click on the 3rd from right icon on the bottom of the layers pallet, it is circular with half coloured in black and half in white. This then brings up another pallet to enable the user to choose what is wanted, click on the levels line and yet another pallet (Levels) will appear.
- Click ok on the levels pallet, what has now happened is that you should have a new layer mask between the Background and the background copy on the layers pallet.
- Next, highlight the upper, or Background Copy, layer, and press Ctrl G, to group the upper layer with the centre mask layer. (This is most important)
- Again select the upper layer, Background copy, on the layers pallet, now select a filter, the most appropriate one is Noise, and then select Dust and Scratches, Select a radius of 5 or 6 and a threshold of about 7. Then click OK. You will notice the picture appears to be out of focus, that's how it's supposed to look at this stage.
- Next, click on the centre layer on the layers pallet and click on the layer mask, then hit Ctrl I, this will invert the fuzzy photograph.
- Now, all you have to do is select a suitable soft brush and brush over the picture, but, make sure that the black and white colours are showing on the toolbar, with black uppermost.
- You can now see the softening process as you brush over the picture, if it's too much reduce the opacity levels. If you need more then you need to go back to 7 and increase the numbers of the radius and threshold, but if you do significantly increase those numbers you will need to reduce the effect by decreasing the opacity levels.
- When you are satisfied flatten the image and save it.
End of tutorial.
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